DLISTConnection: Information and Technology Literacy Service for NSDL

Abstract

This is a proposal submitted to the 2003 NSF NSDL solicitation. DLISTConnection will develop and evaluate an information and technology literacy (ITL) service in support of science and health literacy by 1) federating training materials, software documentation, and similar learning objects not systematically collected and described in the NSDL and 2) designing, implementing, and assessing a controlled vocabulary for existing ITL standards by aligning them with science and health literacy benchmarks. Further, DLISTConnection will develop rights management policies to facilitate harvesting and use of diverse learning objects by applying selected rights elements Evaluation will include NSDL testbeds and an informetric analysis of the effectiveness of the metadata for standards and rights. Two new communities, ITL professionals and Native Americans will be involved. DLISTConnection thus builds a foundation for the NSDL goal of science literacy by providing current and new audiences of end-users and collections providers with four innovative yet essential services: 1. addition of health sciences-specific ITL learning objects to the NSDL; 2. availability of crosswalks connecting ITL standards to science and health literacy benchmarks and the mapping of those standards and benchmarks to the learning objects; 3. access to intellectual property rights metadata to facilitate re-use and re-purposing of learning objects; and 4. application of citation indexing and analysis to learning objects.